Published 4:00 am, Sunday, October 19, 1997

THE RIGHT MIND

Back in the feel-good era of the 1970s, Los Altos psychologist Robert Ornstein wrote a best-selling book called "The Psychology of Consciousness," in which he urged us to develop the right side of our brains.

That was the side, or hemisphere, he said, concerned with the artistic aspect of consciousness. It gave us musical and spatial ability and enabled us to do such things as get the point of a joke or a line of poetry.

Unfortunately, he said, our society, concerned as it was with such dreary left- brain functions as logic, reason, language and speech, neglected this important part of consciousness. So as a way of making up for right-brain deficiencies, he urged such "holistic" therapy as Eastern meditation.

Now this celebrated guru of the right brain has had some second thoughts. In "The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres," Ornstein backs off from the rigid brain division he described in his earlier book and says all that gray matter may be arranged in a more complicated way than he and other researchers originally supposed.

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"The dichotomies of the '70s might now give way to a more sophisticated look at how the sides differ," he writes. "I had held (then) that the difference was primarily between a sequential way of perceiving the world and a simultaneous one." Or to put it in computer language, he says, between serial and parallel processing of data.

Thanks to new scientific tools like PET scans, which allow researchers to observe the brains of living subjects in action, Ornstein concedes the divisions aren't as absolute as he once thought. No longer can we say "one hemisphere is all positive or all negative, all thinking or all feeling, or the best way to perceive the world," he says. On the contrary, the left hemisphere is "certainly capable of creativity and leaps of insight" -- powers hitherto assigned largely to the right hemisphere.

So what exactly is the right hemisphere's role? It's necessary, he says, to seeing the big picture -- "getting the point of a discussion; understanding the hidden connections to enjoy a joke; putting facial, tone of voice and text information together to understand what the other person intends; or creating and appreciating literature."

Why do we have distinctive hemispheres anyway, a characteristic far less developed in other animals, including our primate kin? Ornstein speculates that it's because the right side of the brain matures earlier in the womb, while there is a delay in the left hemisphere's development. "These growth asymmetries may provide the basis for the later hemispheric asymmetries," he writes.

But Ornstein doesn't quite scrap all his old ideas. To him the right hemisphere still remains all-powerful as a kind of controller or chief executive of mental action. It has "the ability to choose and maintain a course of action." Those who lack this controller, such as stroke victims with right- hemisphere damage, "don't do well in life. They're disorganized, incoherent and make bad decisions."

Even more important, he says, "there is evidence that there is a special role for the right hemisphere in developing the overall meaning of life's situations; the large view, or a higher organization of events." Indeed, Ornstein thinks it might well be the site of that all-important quality called wisdom.

Despite his earlier pronouncements, Ornstein acknowledges that neither side of the brain does anything on its own. As he puts it: "When one's 'partner in life' is disordered, the other half, like a good friend, tries to take over. But neither side can do the job without the other."

It's always heartening to see a well- known scientist willing to modify his views in the light of new research and even look back on his earlier work with some bemusement. He recalls, for instance, how the first book set off an orgy of inquiry by naive researchers who began measuring the brain waves and eye movements of almost every mystic and Zen master in sight to probe the secret power of their right brains.

Still, while Ornstein commendably avoids scientific jargon, his efforts at a popular style occasionally go awry, as in this metaphorical misfire: "As a collection of bricks a building does not make, so a collection of information, be it corners of a Maltese cross or descriptions of the waiting room, do not meaning make." Obviously a failure of the right hemisphere. Or was it the left?

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